Maryland clinics respond to meningitis outbreak

BERLIN, Md. (AP) — Several Maryland medical facilities spent Thursday calling patients who received injections of a possibly tainted steroid linked to the illnesses of about three dozen people in several states. At least five people have died.

The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said seven clinics around the state received the drug from a specialty pharmacy in Massachusetts. The pharmacy issued a recall last week and has shut down operations. One person died in Maryland and another person is ill.

Health officials have not identified the Maryland resident who died. They say the outbreak is linked to steroid injections, mostly for back pain.

Some patients weren’t waiting to hear from the clinics.

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“We have a lot of patients that are calling in that are concerned,” said Kim Merrill, the nurse administrator at the Harford County Ambulatory Surgery Center, one of the clinics that received the drug.

Merrill said she believed some 200 to 300 people needed to be contacted. She had no reports that anyone had become ill.

Robert Cherry, 71, a patient who received a steroid shot about a month ago, visited the clinic he had gotten his shot at Thursday morning after hearing it had received some of the tainted medicine. Cherry said he received the shot at Berlin Interventional Pain Management on Aug. 28.

“So far, I haven’t had any symptoms ... but I just wanted to double check with them,” Cherry said. “They told me to check my temperature and if I have any symptoms... I should report straight to the emergency room, and that’s what I’ll do.”

Dr. Christopher Galuardi, who runs the Berlin clinic, said there were no reports of any of his patients had become ill. Galuardi said he received two lots of the drug recently. He returned one lot of 50 vials unused. Of the 30 vials in the earlier lot, 18 were used and 12 were returned, Galuardi said.

LaVerne Naesea, executive director of the state pharmacy board, declined Thursday to say whether the specialty pharmacy, the New England Compounding Center, was being investigated. She said the company has had a permit to do business in Maryland since 2003 and that there’s no record of it having been publicly disciplined before. A new regulation enacted earlier this fall empowers Maryland to investigate out-of-state pharmacies that do business in the state, regardless of any investigations taken by the state where the pharmacy is located, Naesea said.

The law change was inspired by a concern that out-of-state pharmacies were engaging in deceptive practices without the knowledge of Maryland officials.

“Our new law says that the Board of Pharmacy can conduct its own investigation, that the Board of Pharmacy can make its own conclusions, that it can draw information from the other states that may or may not be involved,” she said.

An administrator at the SurgCenter of Bel Air said they had contacted six patients and none reported problems. An administrator at the Greenspring Surgery Center said they had about 300 people to contact and expected to have calls finished Thursday. Diana Beach, practice administrator at Maryland Pain Specialists of Towson, said Thursday no patients of Maryland Pain Specialists received spinal injections of the identified steroid from New England Compounding Center.